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What goes around, comes around

In 1972, Bruce McTrowe sold his three-year-old Warwick blue Pontiac GTO, one of the classic all-American muscle cars, to a friend in Banff.
Canmore resident Bruce McTrowe poses with his 1969 Pontiac GTO.
Canmore resident Bruce McTrowe poses with his 1969 Pontiac GTO.

In 1972, Bruce McTrowe sold his three-year-old Warwick blue Pontiac GTO, one of the classic all-American muscle cars, to a friend in Banff.

It’s been a decision he’s regretted for the past 39 years, especially as he sold the car, with its dark blue vinyl hardtop roof, chrome hubcaps and 350 horsepower, 400 cubic-inch blue-block engine, to buy a second pickup truck.

“I was young and foolish. I sold it and got another pickup. It was stupid, right?” he said with a laugh. “I have always regretted selling that one.

“My kids, growing up, kept hearing about the GTO and Cheryl (McTrowe’s wife) kept hearing about the GTO and it was always on my wish list to have another one and every time I saw one, it just made it that much more enticing.”

Four decades later, McTrowe has corrected his error in selling a favoured set of wheels.

The Banff-born Canmore resident fell in love with a new 1969 GTO sitting on the showroom floor at Calgary Motor Products when he was 19. McTrowe bought the car for $4,856.64.

After a couple of years, McTrowe’s friend sold the GTO to a buyer who took it from Banff to Invermere.

Every time McTrowe saw a GTO, he pined for his long-lost car and it certainly didn’t help that the hit CBC TV show Republic of Doyle features a ’68 Warwick blue GTO. Every time it gets banged up on screen, McTrowe cringes.

And he finally got the chance to do something about his regret in mid-November, when he found a ’69 Warwick blue GTO with mag wheels, but without a vinyl roof, an hour outside of Calgary for sale for $13,000.

He went to look at the car with Cheryl and when the owner pulled the cover off, McTrowe fell in love. Even though it didn’t look exactly like his first GTO, it was quite close.

“Cheryl says I had a chemical reaction, not knowing at the time there was a reason for the chemical reaction,” McTrowe said.

Knowing that somewhere in his files he still had the original bill of sale from his first GTO and that only 3,100 ’69 GTOs were sold across Canada, McTrowe said he wanted to find out how close the two cars had been on the production line.

For three days, McTrowe searched obsessively for the bill of sale, finally finding it among some papers in his shop.

“I told Cheryl and she said ‘that’s great, you’ve got the bill of sale and you’ve got the car, let’s move on to something else’. No sooner had she got the words out of her mouth and I had taken the bill of sale out of my pocket because I wanted to compare numbers and see how close this one was to my original car.

“And I just yelled out ‘it’s my car, it’s my car’!”

The serial numbers matched – it was the same GTO he had bought in 1969 and sold in 1972.

McTrowe didn’t even consider he would ever find his car and when he bought the GTO the second-time around, the fact it had mag wheels and did not have a vinyl roof led him to think it was a different car.

“I never even thought it was a possibility, just because it was as close as I was going to come to my (original) car,” he said. “Over the years I thought, ‘well, I’ll never see that car again, it’s gone. It could be in a junkyard.’ How do you know?”

As it turns out, the car had ended up on a Calgary car lot, where the man who sold it to McTrowe in November had bought it in 1996.

Today, the GTO has 80,000 miles on it. When McTrowe sold it in 1973, it had 23,000.

Overall, McTrowe said the car is in great shape, with only a strip of rust above the chrome over the rear right wheel.

The engine is not original, however. At some point, the original engine was replaced with an engine block built in 1971. The 8-track player is gone and the radio has been replaced with a CD player.

But otherwise it is the same car.

“The people who have owned this car over the years have taken good care of it because it knew it was coming back to me,” he said. “A good friend of mine said, ‘just go with it, don’t try to figure out why you had the bill of sale and why all of a sudden the car comes up; there was a reason and you don’t need to know the reason, just enjoy it’.”

And McTrowe is enjoying it; he’s got his car back and 39 years later his regret has been washed away. If anything is the tonic of youth – at least for guys who love cars – it’s getting that first and much-loved car back.

“(Cheryl) says I was 19 years old again,” he said. “I got into it one day and took it for a little spin, and as soon as I got into it, I sat in the seat and it was like it held me. It’s the only way I can describe it. It felt so good. When we drove it around the block, I couldn’t believe it. The power was still there.

“I was 19 when I got this thing. It just boggles my mind.”

A lot of people say they wish they could get that first car back, but who knew it’s a wish that can actually come true?


Rocky Mountain Outlook

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